D&D (2024) Comeliness and Representation in Recent DnD Art

[Fifth Element]

Not in any dictionary I've ever seen.

Cool. But dictionaries don't decide what words mean. Sapience has come to be used more and more to differentiate between abstract thinking and awareness. Hopefully your dictionary will catch up at some point.

 

[Charlaquin]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

Sapient means thinking, sentient means feeling.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

All "sentient" literally means is "Has senses and can process data from them."

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

Sapient doesn't mean what you think it does here. It has to do with the ability to assess and think about things. You can make an argument about what degree non-human terrestrial species can do so, but at the very least you've reversed the two here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Not in any dictionary I've ever seen.

Sapient is a largely deprecated word that has long fallen out of use.

Sentient describes the ability to think about sentience. That's WHY you use the word sentience and not sapience.

I can give you two online cites without even working at it, man. Literally the first two searches I did came up with the definitions that poster gave.

 

[Hussar]

Huh. Learned something new today. Granted, I've only ever seen SF fans use the word sapience. I've never seen it in any other context.

Everyone else uses sentient as the ability to perceive sentience. I've never come across anyone talking about sapience. Or sapient. Weird.

 

[Older Beholder]

It’s the little details that make playing other species fun.
In a game once, we’d beaten a Wyvern in its lair full of shells from hatched eggs. When taking a rest after the battle my Kenku climbed into one of the eggs and curled up for his nap. It’s stuff like that which makes roleplaying fun for me.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

"Sapience" is a somewhat more recent term in public usage (though quite old in scientific usage), which cropped up as a result of the casual, everyday use of the word "sentient" being at odds with its scientific definition.

Conflicts like this arise quite often in the contrast between scientific jargon (which is usually very precise) and common usage (which often latches onto whatever first happened and runs with it). "Bisexual," for example, originally meant "someone who has two anatomical sexes," e.g., what we now call "hermaphroditic" today. Kinsey, the well-known biologist and sexologist, particularly disliked the use of the term "bisexual" to refer to people who were attracted to both male and female partners, but he just flatly lost that battle in the long run. Now, "bisexual" is almost universally used as an orientation term, not an anatomy term.

The reverse situation happened with "sentient" vs "sapient." "Sentient" refers to the ability to feel sensations and (generally) emotions of some kind, however limited; it comes from the Latin sentiens, "feeling," present participle of sentio, "I feel." Often, the ability to experience pain is one of the most relevant standards for sentience, as that means not just experiencing injury, but the additional harm of suffering. So, for example, ants would generally not be considered sentient, but all vertebrates (fish, frogs, birds, mammals, etc.) are. Cnidarians, aka jellyfish, are another example of a clade where there is a nervous system present, but it's delocalized, and thus jellyfish are not generally believed to be sentient by most zoologists and neurologists today.

(As an aside, some of the blame here can be placed on Descartes, who thought all non-human animals were pure automata, completely incapable of sentient experience to even the smallest degree. The scientific consensus of the 20th century is that this is absolute bunk.)

As a result, a different term is needed for the dramatic level of cognitive difference between humans and most or possibly all other extant life on our planet, and one already exists: "sapient." It comes from the Latin sapiens, which you've heard about from our species name, Homo sapiens, meaning "wise man." (Ultimately, sapiens is the present participle of sapio, which means both "I am wise"/"I know [how to do]" and "I taste," presumably arising from a meaning centered on how taste requires discernment and judgment.) Hence, a sapient being is not merely sentient, though that is certainly a requirement for sapience, but rather capable of all the emotions and cognitive states a human is capable of.

The shift from "sentient" to "sapient" in literature and the public media is a product of, as far as I can tell, about the last 25-30 years or so. Prior to that, science fiction was perfectly comfortable using "sentient" exclusively. I suspect the shift is mostly due to a rise in scientific study of neurobiology, public awareness of the technical terms involved, and a desire for "harder" science fiction, that takes real scientific concepts and jargon seriously.

 

[Hussar]

as far as I can tell, about the last 25-30 years or so

And now I feel really, really old.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And now I feel really, really old.

While I know you have an edge on me in that particular race, it felt less than the best to say that on my end as well.

Because I also started out with "sentient" and it's been a process of re-learning for me, as well. It's part of how I have a sense of roughly when this started happening!

 

[michaeljpastor]

"Sapience" is a somewhat more recent term in public usage (though quite old in scientific usage), which cropped up as a result of the casual, everyday use of the word "sentient" being at odds with its scientific definition.

Conflicts like this arise quite often in the contrast between scientific jargon (which is usually very precise) and common usage (which often latches onto whatever first happened and runs with it). "Bisexual," for example, originally meant "someone who has two anatomical sexes," e.g., what we now call "hermaphroditic" today. Kinsey, the well-known biologist and sexologist, particularly disliked the use of the term "bisexual" to refer to people who were attracted to both male and female partners, but he just flatly lost that battle in the long run. Now, "bisexual" is almost universally used as an orientation term, not an anatomy term.

The reverse situation happened with "sentient" vs "sapient." "Sentient" refers to the ability to feel sensations and (generally) emotions of some kind, however limited; it comes from the Latin sentiens, "feeling," present participle of sentio, "I feel." Often, the ability to experience pain is one of the most relevant standards for sentience, as that means not just experiencing injury, but the additional harm of suffering. So, for example, ants would generally not be considered sentient, but all vertebrates (fish, frogs, birds, mammals, etc.) are. Cnidarians, aka jellyfish, are another example of a clade where there is a nervous system present, but it's delocalized, and thus jellyfish are not generally believed to be sentient by most zoologists and neurologists today.

(As an aside, some of the blame here can be placed on Descartes, who thought all non-human animals were pure automata, completely incapable of sentient experience to even the smallest degree. The scientific consensus of the 20th century is that this is absolute bunk.)

As a result, a different term is needed for the dramatic level of cognitive difference between humans and most or possibly all other extant life on our planet, and one already exists: "sapient." It comes from the Latin sapiens, which you've heard about from our species name, Homo sapiens, meaning "wise man." (Ultimately, sapiens is the present participle of sapio, which means both "I am wise"/"I know [how to do]" and "I taste," presumably arising from a meaning centered on how taste requires discernment and judgment.) Hence, a sapient being is not merely sentient, though that is certainly a requirement for sapience, but rather capable of all the emotions and cognitive states a human is capable of.

The shift from "sentient" to "sapient" in literature and the public media is a product of, as far as I can tell, about the last 25-30 years or so. Prior to that, science fiction was perfectly comfortable using "sentient" exclusively. I suspect the shift is mostly due to a rise in scientific study of neurobiology, public awareness of the technical terms involved, and a desire for "harder" science fiction, that takes real scientific concepts and jargon seriously.

Yes, I was using sentient in the classic SF way - 'self-aware' - regardless of the pedantic correctness of it.

All of which has nothing to do with my original point. It would be nice to have a species that is both soulless and self-aware, just as equal as any 'ensoulled' creature. One shot at existence, no resurrection, no reincarnation, what you see is what you get, and not be considered "gross".